Factory Acceptance Testing: From Three Different Perspectives

For many projects in industry, a decision to specify acceptance testing in the factory of suppliers that manufacture equipment involves many tradeoffs. On the positive front, identifying defects and validating functional operation in the factory comes at a much lower up-front cost than discovering these in the field after equipment is installed. On the other end of the spectrum, the producer is burdened with up-front costs in developing suitable specifications for factory testing, causing possible delays in the project schedule, and impacting the time before equipment can be field commissioned and energized. This paper will focus on factory acceptance testing from the perspective of the product manufacturer, the project specifying engineer, and the producer/user, considering electrical equipment such as motors, switchgear, transformers, cables, as well as process control equipment like Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs), Distributed Control Systems (DCS), Human Machine Interfaces (HMIs) and remote I/O. What products should be considered for factory acceptance testing and those that should not be considered will be identified. Control of project schedule will be addressed, outlining when and for how long acceptance testing should occur during the project cycle. Finally, summary recommendations outlining when factory acceptance testing should be required for a proposed list of various types of electrical equipment will be reviewed, recommending which products should be factory tested prior to shipment.